


An Emptied World

by straightforwardly



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Grief/Mourning, Implied Haunting, Possession, Suicide, minor Emil/Lalli, unspoken feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 21:18:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16026155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straightforwardly/pseuds/straightforwardly
Summary: Emil fails.





	An Emptied World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rirren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rirren/gifts).



> There is a line from page 918 quoted at one point.

They weren’t going to make it.

Emil ran, Lalli’s unconscious body bouncing against his shoulders, but still he heard the troll crashing after him. It hadn’t caught up yet, but it wouldn’t be much longer. He’d never been good at running. Adrenaline could only do so much; already he felt his muscles burn with strain. And there was nowhere to hide—all around him were only the hewn remnants of long abandoned fields and the wide open sky. 

_Stop being so stubborn! Just leave my body behind_ , said Lalli, not for the first time. Emil ignored him, as he had every time before. That was not an option, no matter how Lalli insisted on it. No matter how much he didn’t want to die. He wasn’t going to abandon Lalli. He wasn’t going to trade Lalli’s life for his. If there actually was an afterlife—which, if magic was real, then who knew what else could be — then Lalli could just get mad at him when they met again there. 

Some of his determination must have finally gotten through, because Lalli abruptly went silent. 

Emil kept on running, but he could feel himself starting to slow. His breath scraped against his lungs like ice. How much longer before the creature caught up with him? Ten minutes, maybe? Fifteen, if he were really, really lucky? 

_Lalli_? he thought, hoping that he wasn’t too upset with him to answer. If he had to die, then at last he’d like to hear a friendly voice at the end of everything.

There was no answer.

Emil exhaled, disappointed—and at that same moment, his head burst into a spiral of pain and bright light. He gasped, stumbling— 

And stopped moving.

Or, rather, his _body_ stopped, without any input from him. Panic thudding inside of him, he tried to step forward, to start running again before the few minutes he did have left to live were lost too, but his body didn’t react. Inside, it knelt, dropping Lalli’s form gracelessly to the ground. 

_What — what’s happening_? Was this one of the trolls, somehow affecting him in some terrifying new way, like the one that had tried to lure him to its house? Frantic, terrified, he called out for help. _Lalli_!

 _Stupid_ , Lalli said, but there was no bite to it. His voice sounded different than it had before—closer, somehow. _I told you. You have to leave me behind_.

It wasn’t a troll doing this to his body. It was Lalli. It was Lalli who had stopped them from running; it was Lalli who had dropped his own body to the ground, and it was Lalli who now knelt down besides it.

And it was Lalli who reached out with Emil’s hands and picked up his rifle.

Suddenly, Emil realized what he meant to do.

 _No, Lalli, stop! Don’t!_ He tried to stop his body from moving, to wrench back control, but no matter how hard he tried, his body didn’t respond. Instead, his legs stood. His arms lifted the rifle. His eye sighted through the scope, focusing on Lalli’s pale, slack face. 

The crashing footsteps of the trolls grew ever-louder.

_Lalli, please!_

His finger pulled the trigger.

* * *

_...You can leave my body behind. But please put a bullet in my brain. I don’t want my body to be ripped apart by them._

How long ago had Lalli said that to him? A few hours ago? A day?

* * *

When Emil came back to himself, he didn’t know where he was. The sun peeked over the horizon, chasing away the last remnants of the night. His head ached, his face was wet with tears, and everything was silent. 

Lalli’s rifle was still in his hands.

He looked down at it, and remembered—and then he was on his knees, vomiting all over the slush-covered ground. The bitter, acrid stench overpowered the clear morning air, and he stayed there, heaving, all his limbs trembling, for far longer than he knew.

Finally, swallowing—the bile stung his throat—Emil looked up, and back at the footsteps lining the mud and snow behind him. 

He — he couldn't just leave him there. Not like that.

His limbs shuddered as he forced himself to stand. He started walking, back the way he came. 

It took him hours to realize that he was still carrying Lalli’s rifle. He nearly threw it away then and there, but something inside him that sounded an awful lot like Sigrun reminded him that one couldn’t have too many weapons when in the Silent World. 

He couldn't die. After what Lalli had done—he couldn’t waste it by dying. So he slung the rifle on his back, ignoring how his shoulder muscles, already sore, protested at the new weight, and kept on moving. 

He didn’t know how far he needed to go. He hadn’t run the whole night, he knew; his body just wasn’t capable of that, and he’d been walking when he’d come back to himself. He must have run long enough to escape the troll, but beyond that, he knew—nothing. 

In the end, the sun had almost fully set when he got there. He’d known that he should stop and search for shelter for the night when the sky had first started to darken; now, he was grateful that he hadn’t.

The troll hadn’t left the body alone. What remained barely looked human, let alone like Lalli. Even obscured by the night, the first glimpse was enough to send bile crawling up his throat, though nothing came out—he hadn’t eaten all day. Pressing his fist against his mouth, Emil turned away, and then he was crying again, with ugly, desperate sobs.

His hands could still feel the weight of the rifle. The pressure on his fingers as they squeezed the trigger.

It had been so quiet, walking back.

* * *

The ground was still frozen too hard to dig into. Even if it hadn’t been, he didn’t have anything to dig with. So he went looking for stones to build a cairn with instead, like they had done with Tuuri only a few days before. 

It was long, hard work. He had to scavenge far to find the stones he needed, though his process sped up when he found the crumbled remains of a gate. His tears dried as he worked. Something about the solid weight of stone in his hands and the constant, repetitive process of his task made it easier. He didn’t need to think about what it was that he was doing; he just needed to work. 

Often, the stones themselves slipped out from between his tired fingers as he lugged them back to where the body lay, slowing down the process. It had been too long since he’d last slept, too long since he’d last eaten, but he couldn’t think of doing either until Lalli was properly buried.

Finally, he finished, and in exhaustion he leaned down against the side of the cairn. He needed to find some proper shelter, he knew, to spend when remained of the night… but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Not yet. He took a few bites of what remained of the food Mikkel had pressed on him days ago, tasting none of it. Then he leaned his head back against the stone, and, without meaning to, fell asleep. 

His dreams were scattered and confused. In one, he was back in his old home, but the rest of the crew were there too, even Tuuri, and in the place of his old nanny was Mikkel, serving them all a cake made of candles. Then the fire came and the cake melted, as did Mikkel, and Sigrun, and all the others, and a lynx emitting a sickly lilac light came and led him away as everything burned. He shifted towards wakefulness, then fell deeper again into sleep. This time, he was alone in a forest, and all around him something whispered, a slick, insidious sound. He was searching for something, but then an enormous bird came and blotted out the sun—no, the moon—and then he couldn’t remember what he’d been looking for. The dream shifted again, and Lalli was with him, and he gasped the way he always did when Emil dumped too-cold water on him, only there was no cold water, only Lalli and Emil, and they were together in a real, proper bed, and Emil was touching him… Suddenly, Lalli’s eyes were wide and scared and confused, and Emil realized that he’d pulled a knife out from beneath the pillow, but he hadn’t meant to, he hadn’t wanted too, but his body wouldn’t stop…

Emil’s eyes snapped open. His dreams faded away, leaving only the ache in his chest behind. The stone behind him dug grooves into his back, as did the rifle. In that split-second between sleep and waking, he wondered why he’d slept with them on and what Sigrun would say about it—and then he woke fully, and remembered.

He hadn’t slept long: it was still dark all around him, save for the light of the moon and stars. He’d certainly not slept long enough to wipe away the weight of his exhaustion. But something kept him from just settling down in a more comfortable position and going back to sleep.

It felt like someone was there with him.

He got up—and almost immediately stumbled over something soft and warm. Emil yelped, forgetting himself, and threw himself backwards, nearly falling over the cairn and scattering some of the smaller rocks on top. 

A dead beast lay less than a meter before him. A boar beast, by the look of it: he’d never seen one up close, though he’d heard about a team having to take down a herd of them the previous summer. Six people had died. Seeing it now, with its enormous, tangled, barbed tusks, he could see why.

Cautiously, he made his way back to the beast. It didn’t move, not even when he nudged it with his foot.

Definitely dead.

But just to make absolutely sure, he bent down and took out his knife. As he did, some remnants of his earlier dream flashed across his mind. His grip tightened; his breath came out unsteady. _It’s just a beast_ , he tried to tell himself. _It’s just a beast, and it’s almost definitely already dead_. And it was a knife this time, not a gun. But still, he had to grit his teeth and force himself to push the blade into the creature’s head.

It didn’t even twitch, confirming his suspicions. But what had actually killed it? He couldn’t see any signs of injuries, beyond what he himself had just made. For all intents and purposes, it looked as though it had just laid down and died. He’d never heard of a troll or beast doing that.

He saw nothing. He _heard_ nothing. But somehow, he still couldn’t shake off the feeling that someone was there with him. Someone familiar. A _person_ —not a troll.

What had killed that beast?

He swallowed heavily. “Lalli?”

His voice sounded so small. So uncertain. Even as he said it, he knew it was ridiculous. He flushed, torn between shame at his own weakness and relief that no one else had been around to witness it.

He did wait a few moments, though. Just in case. Nothing answered, and finally he gave up, pulling himself to his feet. Moving by night wasn’t safe, but it also wasn’t safe to just sleep out in the open where any wandering troll or beast could see him.

The feeling that someone was there stayed with him, but he did his best to ignore it.

Lalli was dead. And he—he couldn’t stay here any longer.

Emil trudged on.


End file.
